Page 35 of Haunted

“Oh, I know. I used to live in that building. It’s pretty snug. Sometimes a little too snug.” She smiles at me and motions to the table. Behind her, the living area is tucked against the street-side windows.

I take a sip of the coffee. It’s black and strong. The silence descends on us. “So, how’s Parker?”

She checks her watch, makes an amused face, and looks up at me. “He’s well.”

“Were you timing how long it took for me to ask?”

“You did admirably.” She pats my hand.

“So, is he…happy? Is he seeing someone?”

She puts her cup down.

“Parker’s been a bit prickly,” she says. “I would love to sit around and talk about him all day long. But I think he’d be pretty upset if I volunteered information about him without talking to him about it first.”

“You mean, sharing it with me.”

She puts her hand on mine again. “You’re not a monster or anything, and I don’t think he’s ever believed you were, not even at his angriest. But there’s a lot of water under that bridge. You’re a special case.”

“Is he still…mad at me?”

“I don’t think he ever was. But it’s hard to say how he feels now.” She turns her cup around. “There are some things that hurt straight to the bone, so you don’t talk about them. Not even with the people that love you.” She looks up at me. “That’s why he’s never talked about you. Same as he’s never talked about Elliott, or my sister, or Mom.”

I hesitate, because what she’s told me is too big, and if she meant it, I want to go home and unpack it like the one gift he could never give me. I clear my throat. “My mother said he went away. Where did he go?”

“Mostly India. A year in Vietnam somewhere in there.”

“Oh. Wow.” I don’t have anything more useful to say. “I thought when he said he was leaving town that he’d still be kind of—” I circle one hand. “—around. Like the Carolinas. Or DC. Indiana, maybe.”

“Parker was never one for half measures, I think. Probably he heard ‘Indiana’ and thought, ‘why not go to the original one?’” She laughs. I stare at her blankly. “That was a joke, sweetheart.”

“Right. Right.” I pretend to busy myself with my coffee. “I’ve looked for him,” I say to break the silence. “I wanted to just wish him well and keep in touch but he doesn’t have social media. You’d think a name like Parker Bishop would be really easy to trace, but no luck.” I make myself smile. It feels like a grimace. “So, India.”

She rolls her eyes. “He got on a plane at nineteen with a backpack and about four hundred dollars, and I have not had a full night’s sleep since.” She says it fondly. “He does all right for himself.”

India. Nine years. I’ve been in Oceanside and Twentynine Palms and a marriage, and he’s been on the other side of the planet.

“Can I ask you something?” she says. “How long did you two know each other? Before. I never got the whole of it out of him.”

“Since ninth grade, properly.”

“Properly. That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

“We met earlier but, honestly I don’t know if he remembers it, because he didn’t really act like he did when I sat next to him at lunch on the first day of sixth grade.”

“Do tell!” She sits back and folds her hands.

“My seventh birthday was at Captain Eddie’s,” I say. “Out on the highway. It was me and Mom and Dad and a paper hat.”

“Captain Eddie’s Fish Camp. Wow. Do they still have the pirate statue in the lobby? Used to scare me to pieces when I was a kid.”

“They probably do.” I smile.

“So, tell me about the birthday.”

“It was fine. It was over the summer. But there was a kid at the next table having his party in the back at the same time and he’d invited everybody, and I mean everybody, and they had a cake with a shark on it.” I smile at the steam rising from my cup in spite of myself. “And I got up to go look at it, because I was seven and I had no dignity, and I went straight into the corner of the counter with the side of my head.”

Shelley winces.